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Turkey Joins U.S. Led War on ISIS; Answering Viewer Questions on Ebola; Liberia Will Prosecute is Ebola Patient Lied; "Last Straw" Ended Secret Service Director's Job.

Aired October 02, 2014 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The YPG at this stage realizing it may be fighting a losing battle but believing that perhaps they do have a better chance if they're able to draw ISIS fighters into the town itself, because the YPG believe it is will have the upper hand due to local knowledge. But again, those ongoing calls for this international coalition to do even more.

Brooke, I can tell you, at this stage, a lot of the Kurds we've been speaking to, whether Syrian or Turkish, are absolutely stunned that the U.S. and its allies have allowed this situation in and around Kobani to escalate to this degree -- Brooke?

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Arwa Damon for us there on the Turkish/Syrian border. Thank you so much, Arwa, you and your crew, for your reporting there.

Coming up next, more on our breaking news with regard to Ebola. Health officials on their way to pick up the towels, the sheets inside of this Texas home from where this Ebola patient was staying. Our latest reporting talking to Anderson, the sheets are on the bed. Talking to the partner of this man.

Plus, we're getting word about a news conference from Dallas on the Ebola patient there. Obviously, we'll bring that to you as soon as we see those doctors in front of that podium.

And we're also answering your questions. I know you have a lot of them. How long does the Ebola virus remain alive on surfaces like seats and countertops and money? Good question. Chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta standing by with some answers next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: The nation's first Ebola patient -- his name is Thomas Duncan -- he remains in serious condition at the Dallas hospital. His partner is a woman by the name of Louise. She is quarantined with her family in her Dallas apartment where Duncan was staying where he became ill with Ebola.

She talked to Anderson Cooper earlier today. Here's part of what she shared with him. That the sheets Duncan used in the bed in, which they shared, where he was sick, sweating all over with a fever, they are still on that bed. A CDC official told CNN that a medical waste contractor is on the way to get those sheets and get those towels that he used.

Meanwhile, health officials, health workers are scrambling, trying to get in touch with about 100 people who might have had direct contact with Thomas Duncan, this patient.

So what does this mean with regard to risks for you, to your friends, loved ones across the country? That's a lot of what you've been asking, sending to us with #EbolaQandA.

CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, is standing by with answers to those questions.

Sanjay, let me begin. We got news that this patient, Thomas Duncan, when he was still living in Liberia, he was in contact with Ebola patients during that stay there including one individual who had Ebola who he was helping take care of yet still he was able to get on a flight and come to the U.S. Your reaction?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, there's some details that need to be filled in there obviously. I heard some of those same reports as well. I guess one of the big questions is did he know that the patient that he was helping had Ebola? Because what I can tell you if things went right at the airport, he would have been asked about that. One of the questions you get asked is your recent exposure to Ebola patients. We don't know what he knew for sure. I think we need to wait more and fill in details and they may be forthcoming. What you're trying to do if you can confirm that someone had an exposure, even if they don't have a fever and they look healthy, if there's been a confirmed exposure like the one that has been described with him, they would have asked him to wait 21 days, take his temperature before traveling to make sure he didn't have Ebola. I think there's some details that are still need to be filled in here.

BALDWIN: The 21-day incubation period. Glancing down. Forgive me. I keep looking down at my notes. Looks like he was aware this patient was infected with Ebola but we're trying to get more information on that and to your point lots of questions should have been asked that perhaps were not at the airport.

Let me move to the other viewer questions. First one being, can Ebola mutate and become airborne if not controlled?

GUPTA: It's a great question. What I can tell you is that viruses can mutate and even since the beginning of this outbreak we know there have been mutations in the Ebola virus. Each time a mutation occurs, it may change the virus a little bit but it may not have an impact on the way that it behaves. Could one of those mutations potentially make it airborne? Perhaps. Another mutation could make it less lethal. There's all sorts of different things that could happen at any given time. There's nothing to suggest that it is mutating toward an airborne form and some form of coordinated mutations going on so that part of it is unpredictable. Brooke, I hope you get a flu shot every year. I think you do maybe. The reason you get a flu shot every year is because the flu virus changes a little bit every year. It undergoes some changes and same thing can happen to the Ebola virus. It may not go airborne but it changes a bit.

BALDWIN: OK. Another question -- and this is probably because we now know the sheets and towels that they used are still in this apartment in Dallas. So the question is, how long does the Ebola virus remain alive on surfaces like sheets and seats and countertops, et cetera.

GUPTA: Right. Well, we know the Ebola virus can live outside of the body. It can do that. This is something that may surprise a lot of people but this can live for even a few days on surfaces. If it's exposed to sunlight, obviously if the area is cleaned, the virus can be rendered inactivated but it can live on surfaces. It seems to me the real question that someone is asking with that is could then I touch that surface and touch my nose, my mouth and eyes and get an infection. What I'm hearing, and I asked a lot of people about this and looked at a couple of scientific papers examining that very issue, the best answer is that, in theory, that's possible. It's extraordinarily unlikely. When the virus is out there for a bit of time, it may change and be less ineffective but hard for a virus to sit on a countertop and someone else comes by and touches it and gets infected. That just doesn't seem very likely.

BALDWIN: OK. Sanjay, stick around because we're getting more breaking news.

We're now hearing from a certain someone who is the half brother of this patient. Also hearing from the Liberian airport, to Sanjay's point, asking about questions not asked of this patient, which says Thomas Duncan was screened three times before he boarded this flight, and the airport will attempt to prosecute him if he made a false statement. So legal action being taken here. We'll analyze this, next.

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BALDWIN: All right. Sounds like there could be a possible prosecution happening if this patient, if this individual, who flew from Monrovia, Liberia, to the United States to Dallas, the one infected with Ebola, didn't exactly tell the truth when he hopped on that plane. We have to figure that out.

Elizabeth Cohen is joining us live from Dallas.

We still have Sanjay Gupta joining us live from Centers for Disease Control.

Elizabeth, first to you.

Can you tell us what you know for the screening process for Duncan to have left Liberia in the first place?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: I left Liberia on September 26th, a week after Duncan would have left Liberia. I know that we went through the same process. I was handed a form that I had to fill out and there are two questions that I think are of particular interest in this case, Brooke. One of the questions is did you stay in a house with or have other casual contact with an Ebola patient and have you taken care of an Ebola patient or come into contact with bodily fluids of an Ebola patient. So if you answer question to any of those questions, you get secondary screening. Doesn't mean you can't leave the country. It means that they are going to talk with you and screen you again. They take your temperature again. So we don't know how he answered those questions. We don't know if he went through that secondary screening.

BALDWIN: Sanjay, to you, I thought you brought up a great point as we get information that the Ebola patient in serious condition in Dallas was living in a home where he and others were carrying for this Ebola infected patient. So he would have answered yes to one of those questions that Elizabeth just mentioned. So we don't know how he answered but was he showing signs of a fever? He wasn't in Liberia, correct?

GUPTA: My understanding is he was without any signs or symptoms and was able to get on the plane. I think earlier, they gave his exact temperature which was a normal body temperature at the time that he was screened in Liberia. There wouldn't have been any indication from taking his temperature.

But the questionnaire is important. We don't know how he answered. We don't know what he knew. It's one of these situations where I think some of the details do matter here.

BALDWIN: Absolutely.

GUPTA: Did he know that the person who was sick, in fact, had Ebola? That could be a difficult thing to know because there are different viral diseases that can cause these types of symptoms in West Africa and Liberia. So I think that's really important to find out though what he knew and how he answered based on that knowledge.

BALDWIN: Also at least to give him -- I don't want to say credit, but at least what we're learning from his partner, who spoke with Anderson Cooper earlier today, he was forthright with this nurse at this hospital in Dallas in saying two different times, "I came from West Africa." I don't know if the word "Ebola" came up but there was that lost in transition issue because the nurse didn't relay that to doctors and he ended up going home.

So, Elizabeth, my other question to you in the news value, the news nugget in this is we learn airport authority will seek to prosecute him if it's determined that he made a false declaration and if he lied in the airport in Liberia.

COHEN: It will be interesting. Do they still have that form? Do they keep them for that long? If what "The New York Times" reports is true, which is that he carried an Ebola patient, he had definitely close contact with an Ebola patient and answered no, that's an issue.

BALDWIN: That would be a problem.

Elizabeth Cohen and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much. We'll come back to you. We'll come back to this. A reminder, we're watching and waiting for this news conference to

happen in Dallas. It will be city and county and state officials to update everyone on what's happening there with this Ebola patient. We'll bring that to you live as soon as we see that happen.

Also ahead, the final straw. The final straw that took down the head of the Secret Service. CNN learned what finally pushed President Obama over the edge when it came to the agents and the woman at the top of the Secret Service protecting him. That's next.

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BALDWIN: A Secret Service source says investigators are now looking into this elaborate video that shows all of the turns and tackles this intruder faced inside the White House back on September 19th, and so that footage would be part of the independent investigation looking into multiple failures by the U.S. Secret Service that very day. However, it wasn't that, but another lapse that ultimately cost Julia Pierson, the director, her job.

You are watching with us. It broke this time yesterday. She resigned. Jeh Johnson, and ultimately the president, accepted that resignation.

And a source says the elevator incident in Georgia at the CDC that happened three days before the White House intruder became, quote, unquote, "the last straw." Here's the thing. The president found out just before the public did that a security contractor with an unauthorized gun rode in an elevator with him.

With me now -- he's back -- Jeffrey Robinson, co-author of "Standing Next to History: An Agents' Life in the Secret Service."

We didn't get enough of you yesterday. We had to bring you back today.

JEFFREY ROBINSON, FORMER SECRET SERVICE AGENT & AUTHOR: Thank you. It's always good to see you.

BALDWIN: Good, good, good.

Let's begin with the notion that the president -- watching Josh Earnest at the White House briefing yesterday, saying it was the president only found out about that elevator breach, the afternoon before. So "The Washington Post" had it the next morning. It was -- that is when he found out.

ROBINSON: Inexcusable. Absolutely, inexcusable. Look, there are at least two people who have or should have direct access to the Oval Office without going through chief of staff or anybody who can walk into the Oval Office. That's head of the Presidential Protective Division and the head of the Secret Service. I mean, there is no excuse not to inform the president of what's going on.

BALDWIN: Every time there's a breach, is he always supposed to be informed? What's the protocol? ROBINSON: He should be.

BALDWIN: He should be?

ROBINSON: He should be. Of course. It's his life on the line. It's his family's life on the line. He should be, yes.

BALDWIN: Let's talk about this guy that's the interim director, Joe Clancy. With Secret Service until 2011. He's been in the private practice. White House saying that they are so grateful he's taking a leave of absence to take this top spot, at least for now. And we're learning, yes, he was in charge when the so-called gate-crashing incident happened. That could be a knock on him if he does want the job. But he also worked closely with the first couple on protection arrangements for the daughters. Isn't so much of this about trust with the first family?

ROBINSON: Total trust. 100 percent trust. As the president of the United States, you put your life and your family's life in the hands of these people. It's 100 percent trust. So any breach of confidence becomes a serious thing.

I don't know Mr. Clancy. I do know that his lineage goes back to the Clinton years, which would be fine, early Clinton years. That would be fine. The problem is that what you see with the Secret Service from the time Obama takes office -- and we spoke about this yesterday --

BALDWIN: Right.

ROBINSON: -- the disintegration of proximity and intensity. You see that with Secret Service PPD that he ran. There was not the same intensity and not the same proximity you had with Reagan and Clinton in the first term. So that may preclude him from taking over.

BALDWIN: You wanted us -- and we said yes -- to pull up this video of the White House intruder.

ROBINSON: Yes.

BALDWIN: The guy with the knife gets all of the way to the East Room. So walk me through this.

ROBINSON: OK, now watch over on the left-hand corner.

BALDWIN: And all of the arrows, by the way, these are officers, Secret Service.

ROBINSON: All of these guys are ex-football players. They have all played football in high school or college or somewhere. They should have been --

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: The guys on the roof. ROBINSON: They should have been able to tackle him. No way he should

have got through that door. First, the door was unlocked. Unpardonable sin. That's excommunication right there. He got all of the way into the East Room being chased by these guys? No. Sorry. Where were the dogs? It's a very simple thing. They said, oh, there were too many people around. These dogs are trained. You say, Fido, there, and he goes after the guy running.

(CROSSTALK)

ROBINSON: Well, that's right. I mean, this is one failure after another. And as we said yesterday, and as I continue to say today, the Secret Service cannot afford a failure. Failure is November 22, 1963.

BALDWIN: Jeffrey Robinson, thank you so much.

ROBINSON: Always a pleasure.

BALDWIN: Author of "Standing Next to History."

Coming up next, city, county, state leaders holding a news conference about the Dallas Ebola patient. We'll take that live as soon as it begins.

And all of this as we're getting word that the patient's sheets are still on the bed. And the news that is just into us that the Liberian airport will prosecute him if he lied when asked the key questions about exposure to Ebola before he hopped on the plane and headed to the United States.

Stay right here. You're watching CNN.

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